Isaac Vose and Joshua Coates founded one of Boston’s most highly regarded cabinetmaking firms in the early 1800s. The company’s established reputation and fine craftsmanship came with a correspondingly high cost. This pier table is paired with its original bill of sale dated 1818, which indicates that successful Boston wine merchant John Davis Williams bought it and a mate for $280. Other items listed on Williams’s bill include sixteen mahogany chairs with haircloth seats, a Grecian-style couch, and ten “Gilt and white” chairs. Together, these pieces would handsomely furnish a parlor in the neoclassical French Empire style, manifested here in the table’s stately classical columns, richly veneered geometry, and central gilt-bronze horse-and-chariot plaque.

Isaac Vose and Joshua Coates founded one of Boston’s most highly regarded cabinetmaking firms in the early 1800s. The company’s established reputation and fine craftsmanship came with a correspondingly high cost. This pier table is paired with its original bill of sale dated 1818, which indicates that successful Boston wine merchant John Davis Williams bought it and a mate for $280. Other items listed on Williams’s bill include sixteen mahogany chairs with haircloth seats, a Grecian-style couch, and ten “Gilt and white” chairs. Together, these pieces would handsomely furnish a parlor in the neoclassical French Empire style, manifested here in the table’s stately classical columns, richly veneered geometry, and central gilt-bronze horse-and-chariot plaque.

Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design. “Selected Works”. Providence: Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, 2008.